Section 106 deals are used to oblige developers to contribute to the cost of services and facilities made necessary by their projects. But the regeneration benefits attached to large developments don’t have to end there, reports Herpreet Kaur Grewal.
In life, money isn’t everything. And in physical regeneration, section 106 planning gain agreements aren’t everything, either. In theory, local authorities can only use section 106 agreements to secure developer contributions to facilities, such as roads, schools and doctors’ surgeries, that are made necessary by a new development. They are not there to provide funds for facilities that will primarily benefit the existing community.
However, the benefits that can be attached to large regeneration projects need not be limited to section 106 agreements. A developer may be legally obliged to provide the facilities specified in an agreement, but that does not mean that that is all they are willing or able to do.
Forward-thinking developers and canny local authorities can exploit the potential benefits of large development projects in a variety of ways, and often in ways that cannot be anticipated until a project gets under way. Community groups may get involved with a developer directly in discussing possible wider benefits, without any need for the planning authority to get involved. And sometimes developers recognise that they too will benefit from going above and beyond the call of duty.
Here, we profile three schemes that were made possible because of the presence of large development projects, but which only happened because somebody spotted an opportunity.
Northala Fields
When it counted up the number of major development projects in its immediate vicinity, the London Borough of Ealing spotted an opportunity. Given developer Westfield’s White City project, the redevelopment of Wembley stadium and the construction of Heathrow Airport’s Terminal Five, the council’s planners put their heads together and worked out a plan for how Ealing residents could benefit from the nearby developments without having to pay a penny.
The result of their deliberations is Northala Fields, a new park built on a disused playing field, the most distinctive features of which are four overlapping conical mounds, the tallest measuring 25 metres. The mounds were created using more than 600,000 cubic metres of inert waste, mostly clay, from the major development sites in neighbouring boroughs. Funding for the park was secured by charging the developers of these schemes £85 to £110 for each lorry-load of material transported to the park, raising a total of £1.3 million for the project.
Development proposals for the new park emerged from public consultation and a design competition in 2000. The council had agreed that residents should be actively involved in the design of the site, and a number of public meetings and workshops were held to develop ideas for the park. A contract for the construction of the resulting design was awarded to civil engineering firm CJ Pryors in 2002, Ealing council granted planning permission in June 2004, and works officially commenced on site that summer.
Completed this year, Northala Fields now provides a range of recreational facilities and ecological features, including fishing lakes, walkways and cycle paths, as well as two children’s play areas. The conical mounds also shield housing south of the A40 dual carriageway from traffic noise and pollution.
Construction training centre, King’s Cross
In addition to the physical regeneration taking place in London’s King’s Cross area, developer Argent is funding a new training college to increase local construction skills. Building a training centre was a part of a section 106 agreement with the London Borough of Camden when outline planning permission was granted for the site in December 2006. However, since then, Argent’s plans for the centre have grown substantially.
The original agreement required Argent to spend £700,000 on building a 600sq-metre training centre, and £400,000 on recruiting and employing a co-ordinator to run the centre for ten years. Early on, however, Argent realised that a training centre of the agreed size would fail to make a meaningful difference to local skills development and job prospects, and decided to commit £2.4 million to building something more substantial. “We felt that if we were really serious about developing training, we needed a bigger centre,” says Robert Evans, a director at Argent.
Argent says that the new centre will be operational before the end of the year, and Camden council has contracted construction training specialists Carillion to work with the centre’s coordinator to offer professional qualifications. Dave Reidy, the King’s Cross development service manager at Camden council, says the centre will take on 100 trainees a year and offer courses in trades such as bricklaying, decorating, carpentry and electrical wiring. In addition, Argent and the council are also discussing the possibility of providing training in more specialist skills, such as lift maintenance. “We are going beyond normal training activities and providing a wide-range of specialist training,” says Reidy.
The training centre will provide jobs and work experience on the King’s Cross development, through an agreement with the four construction partners (Carillion, HBG, Kier and Nuttalls). Because all the centre’s courses will be accredited by the national Construction Skills Certification Scheme, trainees will be able to take their new skills anywhere in the England.
Ebbsfleet Landmark
The Ebbsfleet Landmark in Kent will stand 50 metres tall when completed – twice the height of Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North – and be visible from 20 miles away, its backers say. The artwork, part of the cultural strategy for the wider Ebbsfleet Valley development in the Thames Gateway, is intended to provide a potent symbol of the area’s regeneration. According to Clare Foster, a curator at Futurecity Arts, the consultancy that devised the project, the artwork will form a “cultural marker” and a source of local pride for the Ebbsfleet area in much the same way as the Angel of the North has for Newcastle Gateshead.
The artwork will occupy a prominent site at Springhead Park, in the south-eastern corner of the Ebbsfleet Valley project. The regeneration of Ebbsfleet Valley is being led by a consortium led by train operator Eurostar, London and Continental Railways and developer Land Securities, which commissioned Futurecity Arts to produce a cultural strategy for the area. The consultancy recommended a broad range of measures to help put Ebbsfleet on the cultural map, the centrepiece of which is the artwork.
Works of art on this scale are expensive, and the fact that the consortium has put up half of the required £2 million shows its belief in the idea. Futurecity Arts, which is also managing the design competition for the landmark, hopes to raise the rest of the money through sponsorship.
The final design for the statue is still to be decided. At the end of January this year, five artists were shortlisted to draw up designs for the project: Daniel Buren, Richard Deacon, Christopher Le Brun, Mark Wallinger and Rachel Whiteread. All the artists’ proposals went on display at an exhibition at Bluewater shopping centre in Kent last week. Le Brun produced a winged disc; Buren a tower of five cubes; Deacon a stack of 26 different steel polyhedrons; Wallinger a realistic sculpture of a horse; and Whiteread a plaster cast of a house’s interior on an artificial mountain. The winning design is due to be announced in the autumn.